


“You love her, don’t you?”

by 29PheonixLement



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23885227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/29PheonixLement/pseuds/29PheonixLement
Summary: A prompt from Tumblr
Relationships: Alice | Tilly/Robin | Margot, Henry Mills & Robin | Margot, Wishverse Captain Hook | Detective Rogers & Robin | Margot
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

He may be an old soul, but he has eyes. He was once a younger man with the sparks of young love in his eyes, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know the signs of it when he saw them.

The way Alice’s eyes linger on her new muse. Watching closely with whatever Robin happened to be doing: target practice, making new arrows, chatting with her cousin, and Ella, scrolling in that talking phone of hers for a new song the pair could listen to. Alice’s gaze would always be so sharp in that lingering way he hadn’t been able to witness firsthand in a long while with a sketchbook propped open against her lap the nub of a well-used pencil in her hand glides smoothly over the page, another tucked behind her ear, as she works.

He needs to remember to get her some new drawing books and pencils next time he’s close to town or maybe he could ask Robin seeing how close the pair were becoming just to be sure his starfish was properly stocked up for her favored activity.

The soft lingering looks over the firelight the growing number of times his starfish was sweet-talked into staying over just a little longer, the soft touches the pair shared whenever possible really when they thought no one was paying attention.

The way one would just drifting to sleep with their head resting against the shoulder of the other or a few times with their head pillowed against the other’s lap. Mostly Alice when she comes for a visit after she got back from another adventure or one of the Dark One’s little side jobs, but he’s seen Robin play the role of sleeping octopus a time or two before she’d be coaxed back to her tent for a proper rest mainly by Alice or Henry.

He hasn’t had much time to pick up on the changes in Robin as he does with Alice but Zelena assures him that she certainly has over the past months since the pair first met so he can be sure this budding romance the pair have been trying to hide from them wasn’t just single-sided.

Killian had noticed how the young woman seemed to take it upon herself to argue on his daughter’s behalf every time she so much as thought someone would talk about his little girl out of turn. Not to mention how eager she was about delivering his letters. At times even stopping by his tent to remind him to write them so Alice could know everything going on at camp.

Then there were the more glaring signs.

Like that time Robin had spent a good part of the day carrying Alice around after his daughter hurt her ankle although curiously neither girl had allowed Rumple, Regina nor Zelena to heal it for her. Not that any of the magic-user had thought to ask after Robin’s protective decline to allow any of them close enough to try.

It was only later closer to nightfall that Killian had learned the truth of his daughter’s deception.

He’d been on his way to ask Henry to look in on them before bed when he’d caught the pair making a mad dash into the trees hand in hand in the fast-coming darkness. Only because he was curious as to why Alice had felt the need to lie to him did he follow at a safe distance.

Whether the low suggestive moans that soon had him turning tail in retreat back toward the camp when the pair finally did stop was Alice’s or Robin’s Kilian never wants to find out.

Safe to say that when the pair did eventually make it back to camp well after first light that they almost missed breakfast entirely both looking disheveled yet with such a happy glow about them that no one dared asked what kept them so late that Killian dropped the need to push the issue.

Even if all thought the rest of the day he did send a blushing and guilty-looking Robin warning glares every time he catches her eye after spotting another of the claiming marks the archer’s teeth had left on his little girl’s neck. Now he thinks on it Zelena had been doing the same to Alice after seeing the mirrored marking peppering her own daughter’s skin.

Regina and Henry had spent the time trying not to break anything important as they struggled to keep from laughing while the girls sent blushing glances between themselves as they were put to work in separate sections of the camp that really just makes the situation all the more adorable to witness.

*******

“You love her, don’t you Starfish?” It shouldn’t have been meant as the question it came out as once he remembered how fresh all those love marks Alice was trying to hide every time, she tugged her shirt collar up were while they walked.

After all what kind of father would he be if he didn’t walk his little girl back to her cottage every once and a while?

Alice slows her steps a little her teeth moving to nibble at her lower lip as she looks away to hide the blush in her cheeks. “Papa I….” she hesitates peeking over at him as they keep moving down the winding pathway.

“It's alright that you do Alice.” He assures her and he can see her shoulders visibly relax a little as her hand continues absently caressing the rainbow-colored band around her wrist.

A now ever-present gift from his daughter’s love.

“Love is love, Alice. Be it between a man and a lass, two lasses like you and Robin or hells whatever else they are pairing off these days.” He shrugs “As long as Robin makes you as happy as I can see she does I could care less about her gender.”

It takes all of Alice’s concentration to keep from closing the distance between them and throwing her arms around him for a tight hug. Instead, she wraps her arms around herself as more happy tears slide down her cheeks as she holds his eyes. Going by his returned smile he understands the movement. “She’s my Nobin, Papa, of course, I love her. How could I not? Even when she called me a spy when we first met” His full-grown daughter hiccups with a beaming tearful smile.

Killian would have said something else, but another voice cuts him off.

“Dammit Henry, will you stop saying ‘the glowing skip of shame’. That wasn’t what that was now will you just drop it already?”

Really, he hadn’t been keeping that close of an eye on the time. He was just enjoying spending time with his daughter even when their current closeness did make the painful throb in his chest rear up again like a vengeful ocean wave. Not that he would ever tell Alice that. She was so far out of his reach as it was. Telling her that the curse was growing stronger would only push her further away. He’d already lost so much time with her he couldn’t bear losing anymore.

“Oh, so what was it then?” the author asks in a laugh

Alice’s blush deepens at the questions while the voices they belong to float closer before Robin speaks again “Where the hell are, we going anyway?” the young archer asks rather than giver her cousin his answer “I mean not that I’m complaining seeing as gets me away from my girlfriend’s very intimidating and sword carrying father but come on Henry--what’s up?”

“Funny you should word it that way…..” Henry laughs before raising his voice a little louder before adding “Nook?”

“Wh…W…What?” Robin squeaked stopping cold in her tracks. Or maybe her sudden fears were more because Kilian had picked that moment to smoothly unsheathes his cutlass from his belt. Letting the calming slide of metal against metal ring out before he stepped into view on the path ahead of the late coming pair.

“Papa….” Alice scolds hurrying to her love’s side while Robin stayed frozen in the middle of the pathway her eyes wide like a trapped deer. “He’s just playing love.” She soothes taking Robin’s hand and bringing it up to press her lips against her girlfriend’s knuckles in greeting.

“No, I’m not” Hook smiles while his blade catches the light making it gleam between them before he flipped it catching the blade in his hand and holding it out toward the still stunned archer. Robin trips backward a few steps only being forced to stop when she runs into Henry standing behind her. “It will just be a friendly sparing match.” He explains with that fatherly wink that always seemed to calm Alice’s fears. That was until now.

“No Papa,” Alice argues while Robin’s hand tightens around her own. Not that she blames her. Everyone that knew the name ‘Captain Hook’ knew how skilled her father was with a blade.

“Come on Starfish it’s my right as your father.” He reminds in a pout that was so like Alice’s it had Robin’s heart aching in her chest.

Alice rolls her eyes her hand tightening in Robin’s “You already know what she is capable of.” She points out remembering Robin telling her how her father had taken to helping her with her sword work.

“Yes, but that was before you confessed to loving her, little rook.” The pirate explains while Henry lets out a low chuckle from his place stripping down a branch of a tree into a makeshift staff. The first already resting against the log he was sitting on as he worked on the second.

“You already knew I loved her Papa.” Alice sighs wrapping her arms around her girlfriend’s middle.

That seems to break Robin out of her haze bringing a shy smile to her lips as she catches Alice’s eye. “Really?” she giggles as if she doesn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Really.” Alice nodes her smile becoming even more devilish.

Robin swallows.

Oh no. She knows that look….

“Well good.” She nodes “Cause I love you too.” Her mind is scrambling as Alice’s fingers braided themselves into her hair as she leans closer, but she isn’t going to admit to swooning. No way she has a reputation after all. New Robin Hood doesn’t swoon. No matter how beautiful the woman she loves is as Alice’s breath minglings even more with her own.

Alice’s lips were so close now….just a little farther…..

“Hey, come on will you stop with the heart eyes and the lovey-doveyness for a second.” Henry cuts in earning three hard glares in return. “What?” the author prince asks shifting just a little in unease while his cousin huffs unhappily when instead of kissing her Alice’s focus was now only on him.

“Come on Robin, I thought you and Nook were gonna you know play fight it out before we lose the light.” To be far Henry was a little upset about putting a damper on his cousin’s love life but in his defense, he had put in all the work in stripping the branches to not see them in use. 

“You and Ella make the heart eyes with each other all the time.” Alice snaps while a shy and red-faced Robin nuzzles her face against her girlfriend’s shoulder. “Besides we were keeping our relationship below deck, so our heart eyes aren’t as common as yours is. Everyone knows you and Ella are together.”

“On the down-low…it’s on the down-low babe.” Robin corrects sharing a chuckle with Henry over the more modern slang.

Robin knew she was so losing more of her cool points by the second by hiding in the crook of Alice’s shoulder, but hey. Alice can handle herself and she just smelled so good. The delicate mix of her home-made soap, the dried tang of sweat from their late-night activities of the day before, and that just so Alice scent that never failed to make the archer’s head spin and her heart beating triple time against her ribs. “Aye that.” The adventuress nodes pulling Robin back before she became too lost in her head.

A good thing too considering how close Robin’s wandering hands had gotten to the ties keeping Alice’s corset in place.

“And everyone in camp had their suspicions about you two they just didn’t want to say anything because Robin is really intimidating when she wants to be.” Henry defends.

“She does have a point, Henry.” Killian agrees sharing a look with his daughter. Alice’s eyebrow rose as her gaze moves first to Robin then over toward Henry before landing back on her father’s. Kilian grinned reading the unspoken words his daughter was trying to suggest “As my Starfish wishes.” He announces giving a little node even adding a bow that had both Robin and Henry gulping to see while Alice leads Robin back several more steps giving her Papa a wider birth to advance on the nervous Author with an amused round of happy giggling.

“Humm guys….” Henry asks his eyes now on Robin for back up as the pirate re-sheaths his sword before unhooking his weapon belt and sets it aside reaching for one of the two waiting staffs instead.

“See you in the morning, Papa.” Alice chirps sending Robin a reassuring wink as she pulls her willing archer in for that kiss Henry so rudely interrupted earlier. One that promised more to come as soon as they were back behind the safety of a locking door.

“Be safe Starfish.” Hook answers his soft tone contrasting in every way with the hard set of his jaw then his eyes meet the archer’s over his shoulder. “Robin look after her for me. Make sure she gets home.” he adds kicking the other staff into the downed man’s lap as he levels the end of the branch in his hand at Henry’s chest as if the wooden thing was a sword he’d already set aside.

“Of course, Captain.” Robin nodes giving a playful at attention salute that brought out one of the pirate’s warmer smiles. “Shall we, my lady?” she asks with a little bow in Alice’s direction before she holds out her arm while Alice giggles before linking her arm with her lover’s. “We shall good archer.” That plan was stalled a little by another traded kiss.

“Come on guys you’re not just going to leave, are you?” Henry asks worried now as he was held down by the end of the tree branch being pressed against his chest.

“Yeah, kind ah.” Robin nodes a little breathless when she and Alice pulled apart from the lack of air with that little mischievous smile on her lips that had Alice’s heart flipping in her chest.

“Guys come….” Henry started to plead but he didn’t get the chance to finish seeing as he was rolling away from Nook’s warning swing at his head with his wooden weapon while the laughing couple melted into the night leaving the pirate to his teaching lesson.


	2. Chapter 2

She’d been waiting impatiently as always for when it came to her girlfriend’s homecomings. She’d tried target shooting but that soon lost its appeal then she pulled out her phone to start song hunting for the perfect ‘welcome home, I missed you, I love you’ song but again came up uninterested as her eyes drew back to the spot Rumpelstiltskin had told her Alice would be appearing to once this latest mission was finished.

It had been a long one. The longest yet since they’d decided to officially become a couple and that was just a single day before Alice had, had to leave.

She starts pacing again half wishing she taken Henry up on letting him come with her. then she’d at least have someone to talk with while she waited.

Robin’s hand closes over the pocket watch she had tucked into the pocket of her jacket. A jacket that had once belonged to her legendary father that her teenaged self had once stolen for her own after a fight with her aunt one night before the first move to the new Enchanted Forest. The ticking against her palm calmed her as it always seemed to before she was once again swept up in another terrifying wave of ‘what if’ possibilities.

Alice was a big girl. She was more than capable of looking after herself. Yet that didn’t mean Robin couldn’t worry for her right? After all, it was her right as Alice’s girlfriend to worry constantly over her everything going on in her life.

She takes the ticking watch out of her pocket glancing at the time. She’d had it a full month now and she had yet to get over the fact it moved backward. So cool.

She’d just tucked the watch away when a familiar pull of pending magic filled her senses. The faint buzz pressing against her ears, the smokey tang on the air just a few of the indicators as she takes off into the trees.

The pull alone made her heart rate kick up. Yet what really made her insides sing was one oh so joyous fact.

Alice was coming back to her.

“Get down and stay down.” The literal woman of her dreams barked instead of a normal kind of greeting as soon as Robin and broken the tree line. Her voice was ragged as she raced out of the rip of a portal or more playfully called ‘rabbit hole’ just ahead of where Robin was racing to meet her.

Robin doesn’t need to be told twice hitting the deck as fast as she could while keeping an eye on her still moving girlfriend with all the coiled speed and grace of a jungle cat when she ran. So, driven. Not for the first time did Robin imagine what Alice would have been like on the track team at Storybrooke high.

Certainly, she would have left a selfish younger Robin in the dust. Not a bad place to be considering how nice her girlfriend looked from the back.

Its when Alice trips that Robin sees just how keyed up the returning girl was. She’d seen her make jumps like that hundreds of times during their travels together some at even faster speeds than what she was going now but she had to admit the scene was a little like daji’vu in a way only instead of one of Robin’s tripwires the returning adventuress falls over air itself after a panicked look back over her shoulder to check for nonexistent pursuers.

Robin can only watch fearfully as the woman she loved crashed in a painful-looking skid a few feet from her. A good thing too it turns out considering not a half-second later something silver and deadly looking came flying out of the sliver of the still shrinking portal behind her.

Lucky for Alice the knife missed her embedding itself in a young sapling where seconds before the running woman’s shoulder had been. Luckier for whoever had thrown it the portal had closed up completely before Robin could send it back to them with an even deadlier aim.

No one threatens her girlfriend and gets away with it. No matter what realm they are from.

“Harry Potter much?” Robin mutters tossing the blade away like it was diseased while a little wise away Alice rolls over onto her back gulping in air as she’d nearly been drowned as well as being incredibly winded from her mad dash to safety. And going by her wet-looking hair and clothes she might just have been.

What the hell had the imp talked her into this time?

Robin shakes the fairly Regina sounding question from her mind as she cautiously approaches her girlfriend.

The snap of a twig under her shoes has Alice up and spinning around on her knees her glassy gaze casting around for a threat while her hands hummed with an energy Robin had yet to see her ever actually use.

Robin stops at once her hands raised in surrender. “Easy Alice. I’m not going to hurt you.” She calms or tries to at least seeing as the pulse of magic crackling around her girlfriend’s fingers didn’t diminish. “Hey, you’re safe now baby. No one here will hurt you. Not unless they want me kicking their ass into the next alternate reality.” She laughs.

Alice doesn’t laugh she only blinks a few times as one of her hands moves toward her wrist. “Robin?” she asks as her hand closes over the multicolored band around her wrist.

Robin takes it as a good sign and steps closer moving slowly and keeping her hands raised and open as she closes the remaining distance between them. “Welcome back Tower Girl.” She greets. “I missed you.” The hum of magic hasn’t completely left Alice’s hands as Robin lowers herself down beside the woman who’d stolen her heart.

“Robin.” Alice repeats still looking at her like she doesn’t fully believe the other woman was actually solidly beside her.

True that Robin wasn’t exactly wearing clothes that Alice would be sued to seeing her in but in her defense, it was laundry day back at the farm and that included most of her favored hunting clothes. Now she had chosen her more comfier laying around clothes instead. Black colored sweatpants littered with patches and hastily repaired rips in the legs paired with one of her more ‘modern’ tops. This one dark red and sporting what everyone in Storybrooke at least knew to be the crest of Gryffindor across the front.

“Alice.” Robin whispers welcoming the static zing of magic even when it turns her arm to nothing but a stinging pins and needles feeling as soon as Alice’s hand closed around her own.

“Nobin.”

The archer didn’t even think to groan out her usual response at the hiccupped sob of her nickname as the woman she loves half falls half curls into the circle of her arms her hands fisting as tight as possible in the fabric of her shirt holding her in place. “Robin.” Alice whispers almost not believing she was there with her.

“Hey, ssshhh, baby.” Robin soothes. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.” She promises cradling the returned adventuress has closed as she dared given Alice’s worked up state.

One thing was frighteningly clear. Whatever had happened on this last trip for the Dark One had managed to shake the unshakable Alice Jones.

“I swear I didn’t kiss her back Nobin.” Alice stammers clinging onto her for dear life. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I chased the wrong rabbit the first time but I just---I wanted to get back here so badly. To see you and Papa and Rumpelstiltskin.” Alice was crying out right now and that alone was enough to have Robin panicking as she listened.

“then Ravenna was there and she was sweet and kind and offering to help me find the right rabbit so I could come back, but then I wasn’t finding the one I needed and I was getting really scared that I wouldn’t be able to find it at all and then she was backing me into a tree and kissing me; but I promise I didn’t initiate it.”

It was heartbreaking how she seemed so fixated on this point while Robin carefully lifts her from the ground to start the walk back toward the little campsite she’d been staying at the last few nights. She’d been too anxious for Alice’s return to remain a second longer than she had to at the main camp or even to wait for her back at the cabin.

“She wasn’t you so I wouldn’t have wanted to kiss or be with her in that way anyway, but she just wouldn’t respect my rejections no matter how nicely I worded them.” Alice laughs bitterly but didn’t give Robin time to answer. “Then when some of the elder men in her village finally did catch her and I together it was when she was kissing me but when they demanded an answer I ws too surprised to speak so she said that I was the one that had been pursuing her since I came and when she wouldn’t love me back willingly, I seduced her with magic. I tried to tell them that my magic doesn’t work that way, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“Alice, baby you need to take a breath for me okay?” Robin suggests pressing a softer kiss against Alice’s hairline both to stop her commentary on her latest trip and to keep her building anger in check. “If you keep up like this you’ll go into a full panic attack and I don’t want that happening to you, so I need you to match my breathing, okay, Can you do that?” she’d stopped walking lowering Alice back to the ground but still keeping her arms around her as she takes a few deep breaths for her to copy. “That’s it.” Robin smiles once Alice’s breathing had gotten back to a normal rhythm.

“I’m not mad….” Robin started to say but Alice pulled one of her disbelieving faces before she’d finished saying it so Robin changes tact “Okay, I am upset about it but not at you Alice. Never with you.” That seemed to get her anxious girlfriend to breath a little easier as Robin pairs her promise with another gentle kiss to the top of Alice’s bowed head. “but how about we get you back to minicamp before you finish telling me about what this Ravenna you said her name was?” Alice nodes not meeting the archer’s eyes. “Okay but first things first. I need to get you warm; dry and fed. Nook will kill me if I let you get sick.”

Alice sighs burrowing into the circle of Robin’s arms before she replies. “You make me the best kind of sick Nobin.” She takes one of her archer’s hand in her own pressing a kiss against her palm before resting it over her heart. “Would it be alright if I carried you again?” her archer asks. Alice nodes already fisting her hands in the front of Robin’s shirt as she was once again swept off her feet by the woman she loved.

A swirl of black and the crunch of dry leaves under heavy boots hand both looking around in alarm. Alice for once in the few short months Robin has known her giving in to fear and hiding against the curve of her shoulder while Robin can do nothing but tense and wait.

“Robin? Starfish?”

“What happened, young rose?”

Robin smiles at the fatherly worry in the voice of the man most in this world still feared. Not that she blamed them given what she knew of his past even with what she knew of his time in Storybrooke.

“Hurt my ankle.” Alice mumbles the chill setting in making her teeth chatter a little as she spoke.

That was a bit of a surprise to Robin, but she had a good enough of an ‘I’ve got this’ kind of poker face not to show it when both men’s eyes met her own. Although Rumple didn’t look as convinced as Nook but seemed to have decided not to comment on the lie.

“I was taking her back to ca…..”

“We’ll come with you.” Killian insisted before Robin could finish speaking his eyes on his daughter.

“I have the….” Alice starts to say her only slightly shaking hands reaching for her satchel but ‘the Dark One’ was already shaking his head. “Business can wait, my young rose. Your health is far more important.”

Alice gave a weak smile at that snuggling closer into Robin’s hold when they start walking again.

“You didn’t really hurt your ankle, did you?” the archer asks keeping her voice low as she ducked out of the way of a low hanging tree branch.

“Ssshh Nobin.” Alice scolds but rather skillfully passes it off as a hiss of pain at the jostled movement, but the amusement in her eyes gives her away as their gaze meets. “They might hear you.” she whispers peaking over her love’s shoulder at the two men trailing after them.

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone wants to talk or has an idea they want me to tackle just hit me up on Tumblr :
> 
> boldlyshamelessfun
> 
> comments and reviews welcome.


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